Small Business Trends » Tamar Weinberghttp://smallbiztrends.com
Exploring the trends driving small businessSun, 02 Aug 2015 16:30:04 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Your Massive Guide to Small Business Marketing on a Budgethttp://smallbiztrends.com/2015/05/guide-to-small-business-marketing-on-a-budget.html
http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/05/guide-to-small-business-marketing-on-a-budget.html#commentsWed, 20 May 2015 12:00:34 +0000http://smallbiztrends.com/?p=301142

If you’re reading Small Business Trends on a regular basis, you know the importance of marketing your business online.

You likely have an online presence, and perhaps a brick and mortar location too, and you want to establish online visibility for best results and so people can find you.

It’s pretty important to consider a variety of factors, many of which you may not have heard about before, in order to successfully build your online visibility as a small business.

This guide examines the key components for marketing on a budget in your small business. Not all small businesses have unlimited capital, so the tips here won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Better yet, you can probably do them on your own. So read on …

Don’t Ignore Local Search (Costs $0)

Local search is one of the most important things a small business with a physical location should consider. It may even be the most important thing.

Think about the last 10 years and how the yellow pages — do you use them anymore — barely exist. The local yellow pages in some places used to be this three pound book! Now, it’s a quarter of the width and height and is about 200 pages.

Without a doubt, local search is imperative for your business presence. The fact of the matter is that people are searching for you online. They aren’t searching their home for an outdated yellow book to find you.

Fortunately, there are tools to help. The Local SEO Checklist is a free checklist that identifies areas of improvement for all small business websites. It focuses on the various components that enhance your online visibility, be it the basics like setting up Google Webmaster Tools, or doing more enhanced updates like generating a schema.

Don’t know what that means? The Local SEO Checklist has more information and direct links to do just about everything you need.

Run A Google AdWords Campaign; Use Free Credits (Costs Between $0 – $5)

Okay, not all online marketing is free. It may cost $25 — but you’ll get $75 free if you commit to that $25 spend. Google wants you to utilize AdWords. Doing very specific geotargeted campaigns can enhance your visibility in front of the right eyeballs pretty substantially.

Using AdWords isn’t for everyone, but if you can make it work for you, especially with $75 free, you can bid on a few keywords for almost zero spend to test and see if it’s working. There’s very little risk if you haven’t used AdWords before.

Write A Guest Blog, Or Two (Costs $0)

Content marketing is all the rage lately.

By writing a guest article, you are communicating to potential buyers that you’re an interesting business. You’re also communicating to search engines that you are relevant. Usually, a guest article lends credibility but it also helps search engines find you.

Provide valuable content in the article but don’t overdo it. Spammy links will raise eyebrows. But the more you write, the more thought leadership you exhibit, and the better your chances are for scoring business. People like dealing with smart people.

Keep Your Business Listings Consistent Across The Web (Costs Between $5 – $50)

Consistency is key when it comes to local SEO. Your rankings actually depend on it.

If you’re listed as Bob’s Building Company on one site and Bob’s Building Contractors on another site, that causes confusion.

Search engines don’t know what’s authoritative and what to believe. They won’t think of you as credible. Focus on being consistent across the board.

If you want to do this easily, Synup is an awesome solution. It’s super low cost but saves you the time and hassle of managing your physical location across the board.

Run Alerts, Comment On Blog Posts That Make Sense (Costs $0)

Building your presence is not just about your on-site and Google marketing but it is about relationship building as well. Relevant businesses or websites need to know about you and that means learning where they exist on the Web.

How would you find them? The best way to monitor your presence is by using a tool like Mention. There’s a free version and a more extensive version for other types of mentions.

Alternatively, Google Alerts still exists but doesn’t seem to be as great at actually alerting you of new mentions.

Once you determine what to monitor for and the results are pouring in, engage! Comment, and more importantly, provide value. Don’t respond with “my business does this too, thanks for reading!”

Provide something substantive that shows you genuinely are interested in giving to the community rather than only taking from it.

Run Google Alerts On Competitors, Clone What You Think They’re Doing Well (Costs $0)

Want to rock your small business marketing? Have a close eye to what your competitors are doing and clone it. Better yet, do it better.

It’s pretty easy to find out what your competitors are doing, and you don’t need to do it on an ongoing basis (though if they’re innovative, you may consider it).

You can get Google Alerts sent to you when something major is picked up by the wires. Google Alerts won’t pick up on blog mentions and that’s where Mention would be better suited for you.

But you can also do your own analysis of what your competitors are doing. Use social media and search to find out what they may be up to. You’ll often find that they’re not hiding it from you.

Write Some Evergreen Content (Cost $0)

If you’re running a business, chances are you’re smart in something. That’s probably the something in which your business specializes.

Perhaps you’re a caterer who makes delicious meals for your local community, or you’re a technology repair shop and can fix anything from iPads to PCs.

You’re the best qualified person to write something awesome that’s relevant to your business. In this case, evergreen content is the best. You want it to be relevant today, tomorrow, and one year down the road.

Then again, if it isn’t relevant one year down the road, you need to keep churning out content. The more content, the better!

Use Question and Answer Sites To Your Advantage (Cost $0)

Taking advantage of networks to promote content is absolutely imperative. Question-and-answer sites, in particular, are regarded highly by search engines.

These days, a site like Quora is considered reputable by search engines, as is Yahoo Answers and Answers.com. Also check out the up-and-coming site, CareerDean, which is focused exclusively on career questions and has just launched, but already has an established niche community.

There’s something to be said about establishing authority when using Q&A sites. People start to trust you. People want to learn more about you. And at the end of the day, maybe they’ll hire you.

Isn’t that what you’re after, anyway?

Participate In Forums (Cost $0)

Forums, like question-and-answer sites, are yet another great way to establish credibility. Do you know of any industry forums where potential customers hang out? Find them and participate.

It should be reinforced that you should give and not take from the forum experience. Establish your thought leadership and give to the community. The more value you offer to the community, the more people will appreciate what you have to offer and the more likely they’ll even recommend you when someone is looking for the expertise that you can deliver upon.

Install Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools For Tracking (Cost $0)

Here’s an easy one: set up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and link them together so that they talk to each other. This shows you the visits to your site, and it reports any types of issues that may be preventing the Google spider from accessing your site.

It’s important to be mindful of the data reported in both of these tools, and use it to improve the user experience.

Give Great Descriptions (Cost $0)

What are you offering to a potential customer? Write unique product and service descriptions on your website, where you highlight your unique value propositions. Why should people do business with you rather than your competitor?

Display Testimonials (Cost $0)

Is someone super happy with the service you provided for them? Get their quote–maybe something they’ve written, maybe a link to a tweet, maybe a video testimonial–and put it on your website. The social proof lends credibility to you being a valuable business partner.

Seize the Day on Video (Cost $0)

Videos don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. You can create short videos that describe your products and services — in fact, you can even use your smartphone to do so, though it won’t look as great as having it professionally done — and publish them on social media channels like YouTube and Facebook.

And if you do have the budget to invest in high-quality video, you can enlist the services of good companies to make that happen. If you do choose to go down that route, your video may be your most expensive investment.

Network in Person (Cost $0-50)

Visit local events and take photos that you can share on social media. Sponsor local events to get to know people. Go to seminars and meetups. Talk about your experiences on your company blog, Instagram, or anywhere else you envision you can promote your footprint.

Getting your business on the map isn’t a costly venture. Your only investment, in most cases, is time. If time isn’t on your side, an intern can help too. But without a doubt, by following the tips above, you can rock in the small business marketing space and be miles ahead of your competition.

Last month, business technology solutions provider CDW brought me, along with several established tech bloggers, to Chicago to check out some of their facilities on behalf of Small Business Trends.

We got a fabulous warehouse tour. Due to security protocols, the tour did not allow for any note taking or photography once we were inside the warehouse. So my only photographs are from the reception area.

I could not even bring my bag (they didn’t want us to swipe any small boxes of phones, and heck, with everything you saw there once you set foot inside, you couldn’t blame them!). But I thought it was quite an impressive facility and wanted to share what I learned about this behemoth of a company that I’ve had my eye on for years.

Fascinating CDW Statistics

CDW receives $14.6 million dollars of new inventory on a daily basis.

Approximately 130,000 cases of product arrive to the facility each day, which equates to 50-75 truckloads.

The total facility stores $220 million dollars of inventory.

Inventory is turned around on a very consistent basis. Nothing stays in the facility for more than 30 days. The average turnaround time for a product to arrive at the warehouse until it is shipped to consumer is about a week.

The warehouse facility is about 0.75 miles long. It’s better to get around on wheels than on foot, but there’s a dedicated walkway area for observers. For everyone else, there are constant carts moving around with massive boxes. CDW is very observant to OSHA safety standards. In fact, they celebrate each and every day that there is no injury on site.

If you place an order, there’s a 94% chance it will be shipped on the same day.

Between both of their facilities (they have a second one in Las Vegas), there are approximately 45,000 boxes shipped each day. That’s the equivalent of 60-80 trucks per day. Apparently, the shipping companies love them because CDW employees load up the trucks themselves. (Other companies just leave the boxes to be loaded by the drivers themselves!)

The Las Vegas facility ships 1,700 boxes per hour and the Chicago facility ships 3,800 boxes per hour. A shipping day is approximately 10 hours.

Their shipping process is incredibly detailed. For accountability, every product is photographed when placed in a box before the box is shipped to a customer. If a customer reports a problem with the shipment, CDW can pull up the image of the box before it was sealed to ensure that the shipment included all ordered products (or not!) More often than not, though, a box is opened by someone else when it arrives at the client’s destination, and some folks grab the products they like. That’s usually the case when 20 Ethernet cables are ordered and the person who placed the order actually ends up with 5 when the box finally arrives at his desk!

CDW does laser etching and they have a dedicated lab for this. Instead of putting stickers on laptops, companies enlist in CDW’s business to laser etch laptops or tablets that are purchased in bulk for easy identification purposes.

CDW configures and provisions servers too. You can provide a customized image of the software you’d like to install on the server and they’ll set up the server for you.

My conclusion: a truly impressive operation all the way around. Employees appear happy and dedicated. The level of automation and attention to detail for customer service was beyond anything I would have imagined, had I not seen CDW’s operations firsthand. The CDW statistics are a bit mind boggling.

And the best part is that you can immediately see how business customers of any size, including small businesses and midsized businesses, would benefit from CDW’s advanced automation systems combined with the dedicated human touch.

My message to the CDW hosts is that I would return in a New York minute because there was so much to see and learn about this electronics retailer.

Disclosure: CDW paid for my travel accommodations and food as a representative of Small Business Trends during this event.